Jeff Nathanson’s Last Shot

Jeff Nathanson

Jeff Nathanson made a name for himself scripting Rush Hour 2, Catch Me If You Can and The Terminal. Moving from behind the typewriter to behind the camera for the first time on The Last Shot, Chris Neumer sat down with Nathanson to talk about the craziness that is today’s Hollywood.

by Chris Neumer

This is your third project in a row that’s based on a true story. What’s the appeal of that genre?

For some reason, when writing, I’m attracted to things that have some basis in real life. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but the characters are kind of searching for their own identity in all cases. That’s something I’m searching for myself, so I’m attracted to that. When you have truth as part of your story, it also keeps you honest and forces you to never cross that imaginary line and go into the realm of ridiculous. So, I’m in a phase, we’ll see what happens.

This was another film about making a film. Did you take any pains to separate The Last Shot from projects like The Player or State+Main?

Most Hollywood movies that get made are very cynical. You look at The Player or Sunset Blvd. They take a very direct arrow right at Hollywood’s heart and go after it. That wasn’t the goal for me here. Almost all the characters in my film aren’t in Hollywood. They’re wannabe Hollywood people. More than anything, they’re all people who are just desperate to be special in some tiny way. Right now in our society, it feels like Andy Warhol’s prophecy has come true. It’s not in the future when everyone is going to be famous for fifteen minutes, it’s now. It’s American Idol and it’s reality TV. It’s an obsession. It’s not just in entertainment either, it’s in sports, it’s people walking into schools and opening fire. It’s a desire, an American desire, to somehow separate yourself from the rest of the world. It is something about our culture and that was what the movie was for me.

Since this was based-on-a-true-story, were you ever worried that people would start wondering who the real people were? When mega-star Emily French is peeing in a glass at dinner, I was sitting there thinking, “Just who the hell is this?”

Honestly, Emily French is not supposed to be one specific actress. There were some actresses who did actually go to Rhode Island, find the producer and the director who were really desperate to be in the film, but I don’t really want to mention who they were. It’s a little embarrassing. There were real actresses who wanted it though. They’re not stars though. The funny thing is, I’ve seen actors and actresses and writers and producers do crazy things and Emily French peeing in a cup doesn’t even make it into the top ten of things that I’ve actually seen. It was just something I thought was cinematic and that would clearly define her. I think the things that people know about the behavior in Hollywood, the things [actors] say and do that trickles down in the media are just starting to scratch the surface of the reality. I think Hollywood truly is a lot crazier than people realize.

Did you make a lot of changes on set? Or was this something you went into with an iron-clad script and shooting schedule?

I was driving the actors crazy because every morning I would have revisions. I’m a writer at heart and I like revisions. I was handing them revisions on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Matthew Broderick comes from the theater would get this look on his face [when I’d hand them to him]. He’s done a million movies, but I could just tell he was in pain every time he got these pages. And Matthew Broderick in pain is really funny to me, so sometimes I wrote these revisions just to see the look on his face when he’d come out of his trailer and get these pages. Even in the editing room, I was still rewriting the dialogue. For me, the whole process was a giant rewrite. First in my head, then on paper, then on set and then in the editing room.

Did anything you learned in film school help here?

I was only in the American Film Institute’s screenwriting program. In the screenwriting program you’re never allowed to be near the camera.

So they instill that in screenwriters from the beginning, “Don’t go near the camera!”

It’s a segregated world even in film school. The directors are king and the writers are in another bungalow. The directors go out and make their movies and the writers write whatever they’re going to write. They teach you the reality of the film world. Fortunately, I came with a pretty good base of knowledge about film Being a director is a lot like being a parent. At some point, you just have to know that your kid shouldn’t play with matches. I think being a director is like that. At a certain point you have to go with your gut and say, “I think it’s a bad idea to bring in the rubber chicken right now.”